I love armpits! Quite simply, the armpits are the windows to the soul. Not the eyes; after all, what are eyes but two little globs of jelly curtained from above and below by fringes of wispy fringes called lashes. And the lashes are never compatible with the eyes themselves! And part of this is because the eyes themselves are so randomly coloured. And the colour charts from which the shades are chosen are so limited. Why, they don’t even embrace all the colours of the rainbow. Nor do they include such vibrant hybrids as magenta or mustard yellow or orange or Ferrari red. And forget about zebra stripes or leopard spots or flashing neon lights or polka dots or panthers peering from round the irises. Of course, some of these effects are possible with the aid of contact lenses; and in photographs one can always cheat and resort to computer imaging and photo-shop and even to cutting and pasting more interesting eyes into the slots formerly occupied by your own boring greyish blue jelly globs – in other words, the very eyes you have been trying to pass off as ‘baby blues’. But that is not the same, is it. And it doesn’t even work, for the minute someone sees you in the flesh they notice how boring your face actually looks. In fact, faced with the real non-existent colour of your eyes, they can’t even find your face in order to look into it. And so then and there you lose your evening’s entertainment.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you always wear the colours that supposedly enhance your eyes, at least they will notice the vividness of your shirt. But, on the other hand, such a technique does limit your choice of wardrobe. For example, my eyes are your basic, washed-out greyish blue. They are, in fact the original invisible eyes. If I am willing to wear certain darkish bright blue shirts – the ones I loathe because they make me feel as though I am trying to pass myself off as a banker – you can almost see that I really do have eyes. That is, if the light is right and I am drunk enough that my eyes are lined with red. And as for mascara and eye-liner, don’t kid yourself. The only time they work is if you’ve got amazing eyes to begin with. Otherwise you look like Bozo the Clown.

No one with eyes like mine could ever be a Latin lover or a Corsican bandit or a Sheikh or – for that matter – a movie heart-throb. Latin lovers, by definition, cannot be invisible. They must have flashing eyes. The same with Corsican bandits, and even more so with the sort of desert Sheikh played by Rudolf Valentino and Ramon Navarro – the truly smouldering sheikhs that used to kidnap the dainty blond heroines in the movies (before the coming of sound and colour sucked out the audiences’ souls and replaced them with 3-D glasses). The one thing all these heart-throbs of yesteryear had in common were eyes like flashing black diamonds, illuminated from within by the light of the moon. The second you stared into those limpid black pools of desire, you knew what was next on the menu. And it wasn’t called the blue plate special. It was called “Va Va Voom!” It was called the sort of sex that was better dreamed about than displayed on the screen. It was called, “Oh, fuck! I wish (pant pant pant) he would leap out of the screen on his white charger and take me right here on the cinema floor on top of the spilled popcorn and candy-wrappers!”

Never mind that – in the case of those smouldering Sheikhs – once they had kidnapped the fair damsel (usually a simpering blond with a palpitating heart such as Agnes Ayers) they took her back to live in their mother’s tent in the oasis – where she was doomed to spend the rest of her life beating the carpets and hanging out the wash and churning out babies every week and a half. But the movies never showed that side of things – and wouldn’t until the 1960s and Ken Loach and ‘Poor Cow’.

Needless to say, Rudolf Valentino and his ilk cut a wide berth around the likes of Theda Bara, for she was a temptress who would have eaten him for breakfast and taken him home to live in the brothel with her mother, where he would have had to do a great many other things besides scrubbing the floors. In fact, poor ol’ Rudolph did finally come a cropper with a certain Alla Nazimova. And the upshot was that he died. In other words, his eyes stopped flashing. And this only shows that you should never stray from the profile assigned you by the computer. And it also proves that once your eyes stop flashing, you might as well be the parking attendant. Whereas, if you’ve got pits to die for you can always climb out of your coffin and become an unspeakably pitiless vampire.

Let me just add this before we move on. Yes, Rudolf Valentino died. And he died when he was still gorgeous and still had a glimmer of flashing, smouldering eyes that burned like charcoals; however, if he hadn’t died in tragic circumstances and prematurely, no one would remember him. You see, flashing eyes can only take you so far! What they need to ensure immortality is a breath of scandal and a really great funeral with women in black hurling themselves on to the coffin. Otherwise, as soon as you’re buried you’re yesterday’s news and your family won’t be able to make any money from the sale of your relics. Just look at poor old Ramon ‘Who’s he’ Navarro. He was a sheikh with flashing eyes just a rung on the ladder below Valentino. But nobody remembers him. And the reason no one does is that he didn’t die a tragic death, did he? Well, actually he did, but by the time he was brutally murdered, he was just an old, washed-up has-been who’d used up all his money buying rent-boys. Needless to say, not a single woman swathed in black and festooned with jet even attended his funeral, much less swooned over his coffin. And do you know why? Because by the time he was dead, his flashing eyes were more like week-old dead slugs. And nobody even knew or cared whether he had any pits at all.

Believe me when I say that the woods are full of screen sirens and pop idols with flashing eyes who forgot to die when they should have. But as I said before, you’ve got to keep with the program! For eyes dry up, and once the light has gone out of them, they might just as well have had invisible and boring grey-blue eyes just like mine. And after a point, not even fluorescent contact lenses and spot lights will bring them to life again.

Now, there are some – not many – heart-throbs who are lumbered with invisible eyes. And sometimes they even have boring invisible pale skin and hair the colour of mouse turds. In fact, some of them are even cursed with colouring like mine. In other words, whole-body invisibility. Such people were invariably called ‘Minger’ in school – unless, of course, they were cursed with even the slightest hint of salmon pink in their hair (and especially when that hair was growing on a pair of exuberantly forested milk-white legs), in which case they were stuck with the ‘Ginger’ label. And sometimes if you had both things going for you at the same time you really did develop an issue with your parents; in other words, why didn’t they think to match their colour-charts before ‘doing it’? I almost fitted into that category, but then I shaved my leg-hair and it grew back a nice, flat mousey brown. Just think, I just missed out on rejoicing in that wonderful double-barrelled nickname of ‘Ginger-Minger’ (and no, it is not pronounced ‘jinjer-minjer’).

Yes, I admit there are a few career paths open to us mingers and ginger-mingers. I mean, there are certainly job openings galore if what you crave is an action-packed life as an insurance adjuster or an assistant manager in Walmart or even one of the valued associates at Disney World who lives inside a Mickey Mouse costume. But if you have your heart set on being a professional childminder or lollypop man, forget it. Everyone will look at you and know you are both a paedophile and a psychopathic killer. And very possibly a serial rapist, as well – because as everybody knows – ginger-mingers (unlike Latin lovers with flashing eyes) are always lacking in that certain ‘department’ located in their Y-fronts. Using the same logic, ginger-mingers are – it goes without saying – psychopaths. Or at least neurotic whiners who should be placed on the sex-offenders list on the day of their birth.

This is why every single mass-murderer and serial rapist you see in the movies has got those horrible, washed-out, invisible greyish-blue eyes. And the actors portraying them can never get any other type of role, which makes some of them so depressed that they go on to become paedophiles in real life.

But as I was about to say before I interrupted myself, there are certain invisibly pale and boring would-be heart-throbs (the original models for the stealth bomber) who manage to become heart-throbs in spite of the fact that nobody ever manages to see them. And do you know why? Because of their armpits. Because if they have great armpits, nobody ever looks at their boring and invisible eyes or at their washed-out complexions or at their lank and greasy ‘just-this-side-of-gingery’, dirty-looking hair.

As I said before, armpits are the windows to the soul. Gaze into a perfect armpit and you are sucked into a forest of delights. You become a child again, fantasizing about a secret garden outside your bedroom window. Armpits as they should be are the true objects of desire that have inspired every poet from Ovid to Byron to Keats and Brooke, and right down to the present day. And whenever in a sacred text, the Garden of Eden is mentioned, what they are describing is the most perfect, the most sublime and most glorious armpit ever created.

There are certain thespians that have based their entire careers on the beauty and the purity-of-line of their armpits. One example that springs to mind is an American film actor named Ethan Hawke. Now, as far as I know he is a quite a decent actor. And as far as I know he is even fairly attractive to look at. But what I do know is that the camera is in love with his armpits. At least that used to be the case. But, of course, he is older now, which means his armpits might not so alluring. And he might have even let them go to pot. If so, this is undoubtedly the reason we don’t see as many of his films as we used to. For in the olden days, when his armpits were in their prime and you simply wanted to bury yourself in their depths, there would come a moment in each and every one of his movies when he would be wearing a singlet or a similar garment. At the climax of this moment, the lights would focus on his torso, and Ethan Hawke would raise his arms and place his hands in back of his head. And his perfectly sculpted and contoured armpits would make your heart explode. Never before or since have there been armpit ‘moments’ to equal these. And I still dream about them. And as for his eyes, I do not have a clue what colour they were. For in every single film he made, it was all about his armpits.

One of the great recent armpit movies was ‘Benjamin Button’ starring Brad Pitt. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but the way the filmmakers tracked the shifting ages of the protagonist was through the shifting character of his armpits. And that means, of course, through the shifting nature not only of the contours, but of his armpit hair. For as the character got younger, so his armpits became more beautiful – until you got to the point when he was a teenager, and the sheer loveliness of his fragrant gardens was almost heartbreaking. And if you don’t believe me, rent the move and see for yourself.

Now I admit I am neglecting women’s armpits (and God only knows there are more of those than there are stars in the sky – except in Muslim countries, where they don’t have any). And I admit they do have their attractions. Mostly razor-burns or white skid marks from using the wrong deodorants. And I will never deny having certain prejudices where armpits are concerned. However – and, yes, there is always a however – a perfect armpit is only perfect on a tight-knit body and for a certain number of years. For the most part – setting aside the inevitable beaches where all the wrong sorts of armpits are on display from both sexes – men, after a certain age – which means the age when their muscles start to turn to flab and their bodies are best seen after twilight and covered in a boiler suit – tend not to flaunt their armpits in public quite as much as they did when they had something that was worth flaunting. Unless, of course, we are talking about those members of the human race who sit on their barstools attired in cut offs and string vests, or about certain naturists who leave their vanity in the locker with their clothing; but if they are happy then so am I. And then there are those who have never been introduced to soap. In which case, they have coal pits. And as we all know, you venture into a coal pit at your own risk.

Men – with certain well-known exceptions – namely the aforementioned bar stool sitters and those who stopped developing after their high school football careers had ended – do have a certain over-wheening vanity when it comes to their bodies. And especially where their armpits are concerned (we will deal with stomachs at a later date).

Woman, on the hand, while they be as vain as men in many areas, have a blind spot when it comes to their armpits. It is as simple as that. They don’t seem to understand that a young, firm and succulent armpit can be displayed without shame. However, does that mean they should exhibit their nakedness and their razor-burns whenever they brush their hair back from their eyes? In fact, an armpit – which is after all, a sexual organ – should never be flaunted; it should be discovered. However, many women – from the moment they dress themselves in sleeveless tops – do nothing but flaunt their armpits. In fact, very often one sees much more of their armpits than ones does of their faces. How sad it is that they don’t stop pumping Botox into their phizogs, thus making them resemble weather balloons; after all, the only things they are displaying to the gathered assembly are a set of armpits that are – by then – well-past their sell-by date. And there is nothing Botox can do about them.

I won’t go so far as saying it’s a fetish, but if I had a choice between burying my face in a freshly sweating armpit (and notice I used a form of the word ‘fresh’) and a man’s groin (equally fresh, it goes without saying) I would opt for the armpit every time.

I admit that my behaviour can at times border on the embarrassing. For if I am with a man whose armpits are symphonies of delight, I simply cannot concentrate on anything he says. This was – alas – true of the last two horse-trainers I worked under. Both of them were in their mid-thirties, and both – it goes without saying – were extremely fit. Both had magnificently toned torsos… and both of them had the most outrageously succulent armpits I had seen in years. And, no, I never saw either of them shirtless; after all, we were occupied with other things – such as schooling jumpers. But when the weather was warm, both would wear short-sleeves shirts. And I almost could not contain myself. It was pure eroticism of the highest order. All I can say is it’s a good thing for me that it is armpits that mesmerise me. After all, if you are working with a straight man and insist on drooling at his crotch, he will eventually get slightly suspicious. But with armpits you are safe. You can stare at them for days and all your co-worker will think is that you are concentrating on what he is saying. And looking thoughtful. Of course, now that I’ve blown my cover by writing this, every man I know will go round with his arms strapped to his waist. Just to spite me.

What else can I say about armpits? Naturally, they should be clean. Yes, the armpit owner might want to use a small amount of anti-perspirent, but don’t glob it on. And don’t put it on before sex – unless, of course, the thought of my scrubbing your pits with a Brillo pad is what yanks your chain. And if you’ve got a rainforest denser that the entire Amazon delta you might want to check it now and then for borrowing rodents or for one of the lost tribes of Israel. And if you sweat profusely and have been working all day in the blistering heat, please don’t shove your pits into my face unless you want to get kneed. The smell of fresh sweat is one thing; the rancid stench of the abattoir is quite another.

And please, men and women and Walmart shoppers, remember the following politically incorrect statement: after anyone has gained a certain amount of weight (yes, that’s what I said), an armpit ceases to be an armpit and becomes something that might as well be two sweaty halves of a hamburger bun with crab-grass or poppy-seeds in the middle. Now, there is nothing wrong in this; we all have weight problems at some point in our lives. Just don’t persist in thinking that what was at one time an erogenous zone is still one of your main attractions. It is not. It’s like trying to pass off Gary Glitter as the star of ‘Glitter’. And for God’s sake, if you have put on a few tonnes and you do lose your pits, don’t go on pretending you still have them. You won’t fool anyone. And while I may still stare at them, it won’t be from lust, but because I will be trying to figure out if a pit actually existed there at one time, or if you were simply born with a lump of bread dough proofing under each arm.

Ah! Pits, glorious pits, pits of the evening, beautiful pits. Pits are like the sweetest, rarest fragrance. Know the power of your pits! Even if they are as clean and as pristine as a midsummer’s morn, don’t just go shoving them into a person’s face – not even a person like me, who loves a good pit to distraction. A pit that is sublime must be approached like an exotic perfume or a very, very fine wine. Or an exquisite bouillabaisse on which you are planning to dine.

Remember, with a pit that is perfect and with a person like you that knows what to do with a perfect pit, it is not a quick bump or grind or a “howdy do, ma’am, I hope you don’t mind” but a veritable feast of the senses. So give each pit an hour, or perhaps even two, and you’ll break down all their owner’s defences.